Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Ludovico Saggi, O.Carm. translated by Paul Chandler, O.Carm. Mary, Mother of Carmel There is nothing new in saying that the various Marian titles all speak essentially of a relation to Mary as Mother of Christ and Mother of Christians. The various names all speak of relation to her in the mystery of Christ and the Church, whether they concern “historic” titles linked to some event in the past, or—even more—titles which are perennially alive. The latter is the case of those titles linked with institutions which live, renew themselves, and adapt themselves to circumstances. This is the case of the devotion to Mary of Carmel (in Italian, the “Madonna del Carmine”),1 who has dominated the Order throughout its history, from the earliest times of its foundation until our own days, when we are exploring how to live out the rich Marian patrimony accumulated over the centuries. __________ Santi del Carmelo: biografie da vari dizionari (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1972), still the most important single work on Carmelite saints, was edited by Ludovico Saggi, O.Carm., with a preface by Valentino Macca, OCD. It mostly reprinted already-existing articles, principally from the monumental Bibliotheca Sanctorum of the Istituto Giovanni XXIII (12 vols and supplements, Rome: Città Nuova, 1965), with a few from other sources and a small number newly written (the details are found on the back of the original title page). Fr Saggi contributed a masterly and extremely erudite 85-page intro- duction under the title “Agiografia carmelitana”, in which he dealt especially with the development of the Order’s legends about Elijah and the controversies that ensued across the centuries. He also wrote the lengthy entry “Santa Maria del Monte Carmelo”, on our Lady of Mount Carmel. When Fr Gabriel Pausback translated the work into English as Saints of Carmel in the same year (Rome: Carmelite Institute, 1972) he omitted both these valuable articles. He perhaps thought the hagiographical article too academic, but omitted the one on Mary because, he says, “Mary is above the saints, in a different category”. Here is presented an English translation of the article “Santa Maria del Carmine”. Some footnotes have been updated. 1 The Dizionario enciclopedico italiano, s.v. “Carmine”: “A more common form than Carmelo, from which it is derived, with reference to the Carmelite Order.” It should be noted that the form “de Carmino” is already found in the 13th century (from which Carmine is more easily derived): for example in a document of 9 December 1261 from Acre, today in Palermo, Archivio di Stato, Pergamene di S. Maria Maddalena di Messina, n. 113; in a sermon by the archbishop of Pisa Federico Visconti (1254-77), cf. Paolo Caioli, “Il ‘Carmino’ di Pisa,” Carmelus 3 (1956): 119. As a curiosity one can note that even today in the south of Spain (probably through Arab influence) a “carmen” is a garden/orchard, the original meaning of the word Karmel. 1 DOI 10.5281/zenodo.4887818 To say “Mary of Mount Carmel” is to say “Mary as venerated by the Carmelites”. And in saying “Carmelites” we must understand the whole Carmelite family: male and female religious, tertiaries, and those enrolled in the Scapular, because this enrolment also involves an aggregation to the spiritual benefits of the Order and a commitment to live up to its spirituality. To aid historical investigation, it is worth setting out three periods which present special characteristics in the formation of the image or person of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, but it should be noted that the first two periods continue into the third, just as the second and third already have their beginnings in the first: 1) the Patron, i.e., the Mother of the Lord Jesus of the Holy Land (13th-14th centuries); 2) the Virgo purissima, i.e., the Virgin, the Immaculate One, the “Friend of the Heavenly Father”, the “Woman of the Apocalypse”; the image of the Mother of the Redeemer is also not absent (14th-15th centuries); 3) Our Lady of the Scapular, who preserves from hell and liberates from purgatory (16th century until today). 1. Mary as Patron: the Mother of Christ In an uncertain year between 1206 and 1214 St Albert, the patriarch of Jerusalem, gave a “formula of life” to the Latin hermits gathered around the “spring of Elijah” on Carmel.2 Only later did it have the juridical characteristics of a Rule, but for ease of discussion we can call it that from the beginning. But in this document there is not the least mention of the Virgin Mary. From this one might conclude that the Marian element is not original in the Order, but arrived in a second moment, possibly as a means of distinction from other religious living on Carmel (for example, the monks of St Margaret’s).3 There would be nothing strange about a name to distinguish the Latin hermits at the Spring of Elijah: but it remains to be seen why one title emerged rather than another. A pilgrim itinerary, La citez de Jerusalem, composed in the years 1220-29, described the place where the religious were located in this way: “On the slope of the same mountain there is a very beautiful and delightful place where the Latin hermits live, who are called Brothers of __________ 2 In the form adapted by Innocent IV in 1247 the Rule is placed at the beginning of the Constitutions. There is a historical-juridical study by Carlo Cicconetti, [now in a second edition, Carlo Cicconetti, La Regola del Carmelo: origine, natura, significato, 2a ed, rivista e aggiornata, Textus et Studia Historica Carmelitana, vol. 12 (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 2018).] 3 Clemens Kopp, Elias und Christentum auf dem Karmel, Collectanea Hierosolymitana 3 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1929), 106–22. It’s worth noting that the first church of the Carmelites at Pisa (1250/51) was dedicated to Our Lady and St Margaret; Caioli, “Il ‘Carmino’ di Pisa,” 116–19. Was this a reminiscence of their being neighbours on Carmel? Saggi—Our Lady of Mount Carmel / 2 Carmel, where there is a small church of Our Lady”.4 From the little church dedicated to Mary the religious had the name of Brothers of the Blessed Virgin of Carmel. It should be noted that from the Rule of St Albert it does not appear that there was already a church or an oratory, for one of the prescriptions of the Rule itself is to construct one in the midst of the cells. The pilgrim itinerary quoted above indicates that it was already done a few years later: a small church was built and dedicated to the Virgin. The titulus or church to which one was mancipatus (in service of) was an essential element for obtaining approval, even simply episcopal, as a religious family. The choice, then, of a title for the church involved a whole spiritual orientation, for in the feudal mentality of the time a person who was in the service of a church was in service of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. And the word “service” is meant in a strong sense (in Latin servitium or obsequium): it indicates a traditio personae, that is a handing over of oneself completely to the disposal of another, a personal consecration ratified by oath, all the more so when confirmed by religious profession.5 A person who was dedicated to the service of a church (or an altar) considered themselves dedicated to the saint to whom the church (or altar) was dedicated. Clearly if the saint was freely chosen (as in the case of the new dedication of a church) the devotion was more “original”, more “spontaneous”. Therefore, at the beginning of the Carmelite Order (and one should bear in mind that the first church came to be the mother-church of the future Order) there is a clear Marian choice. We can speak of a choice because—even though we do not have any documentation of the decision—we should not imagine that the title would have been imposed from outside; but even if it were, the fundamental reality would not change. Because of this choice the hermits came to consider the Virgin Mary as their Patron. This is recognised by the popes, at least from the time when they name the Order with its proper title, which happens with certainty from 1252: S. Maria de Monte Carmeli.6 Outside papal documents the title also appears before this date.7 Eleven years later, on 20 February __________ 4 Kopp, Elias und Christentum auf dem Karmel, 108. 5 On the meaning and implications of the feudal character of religious profession and of the title of a church, see A.H. Thomas, “La profession religieuse des Dominicains: formule, cérémonies, histoire,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 39 (1969): 30ff., with bibliography. 6 Innocent IV, bull Ex parte dilectorum, 13 January 1252, in Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum 2 (1911- 13), 128 (from the Vatican Register). If it is an authentic bull and not a formulary for the use of some official of the chancery, the document mentioned by G. Abate, OFMConv., “Lettere ‘secrete’ d’Innocenzo IV, in Miscellanea franciscana 55 (1955): 345, contained in ms 79, f. 49r, of the Biblioteca Antoniana di Padova, then the title Fratres beate Marie Virginis de Monte Carmelo occurs before 1252, in fact between the years 1245 and 1247 in a letter of the pope to the bishop of London, ruling that nothing be imposed on the Carmelites contrary to the statutes of their Order. [See now Emanuele Boaga, “Una lettera ‘secreta’ di Innocenzo IV a favore dei Carmelitani,” Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum 41 (1990): 107–11, with the date August/September 1246.] 7 For example in Pisa in 1249, (Caioli, “Il ‘Carmino’ di Pisa,” 138–40); in Trapani in 1250 (Ottavio Caetani, S.J., Vitae Sanctorum Siculorum [Palermo: Apud Cirillos.

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